300 



PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION C. 



£913,138; silver, £9,743; coal, £383,958; kauri gum, £510,775; 

 antimony, £3,467; manganese, £943; mixed minerals, £650; making 

 a total output of £1,822,674 for the year. With the two most im- 

 portant elements of wealth, coal and gold, promising an abundant 

 output for many years. 



We can now see the total production up to the time of your pre- 

 vious meeting in Brisbane. It may be mentioned, however, that in 

 the last year of the period now under consideration an important 

 operation in mining and geology had been completed; the result of 

 geological reasoning and practical work. The perforation of a 

 thick seam of coal at a depth of nearly 3,000 ft. beneath the waters of 

 Sydney Harbour is a gratifying result of the advantage of geological 

 science applied to the useful arts of life. However, with the excep- 

 tional yield of gold in Victoria, so well supplemented by those of New 

 South Wales, Queensland, and New Zealand, as well as the lesser pro- 

 duction of the other colonies, gold mining (as distinguished from gold 

 digging) had become fully established, and a promise of long con- 

 tinuance was held out by the prospects in West Australia, and at 

 Mount Morgan in Queensland, then both auite recently discovered. 



Not to encumber this paper with too many statistics, it may be 

 said that the total production, up to the close of 1893, was approxi- 

 mately £473,000,000 sterling, of which Victoria contributed one-half, 

 New South Wales 22 pei' cent., Queensland S^ per cent., South Aus- 

 tralia 4f per cent., West Australia '28, Tasmania 1"6, and New 

 Zealand 12' 9 per cent. The relation of the production of gold to that 

 of other minerals was as 100 to 31'2, or gold 76'20 per cent., and 

 the others collectively 23'8 per cent. Thus the production of gold, 

 chiefly the phenomenal yield of alluvial gold in Victoria, surpassed in 

 value the mineral productions, other than gold, of all the colonies, 

 including New Zealand, from their foundation by 219 per cent. But 

 the relative proportion of production during the last year of the 

 period was as gold 100 to other minerals 99'4, or as nearly "as possible 

 equal amounts, and the yield during that year exceeded the greatest 

 collective yield ever obtained, even in the palmiest days of the alluvial 

 of Victoria and New South Wales. 



Table showing the production of the principal metals and minerals in 

 each of the States of the Commonwealth of Australia and the dominion o£ 

 New Zealand during the vear 1893 : — 



